Gillingham’s new manager Gareth Ainsworth admitted it was a tough decision to leave his former club - but was sold a vision he couldn’t turn down.

Ainsworth has nine games left this season ahead of a two-year plan that the club hope will lead to better performances and results – stopping short of declaring any targets publicly.

“Leaving Shrewsbury Town was a big wrench,” Ainsworth admitted, as he faced the local media for the first time on Thursday afternoon.

“They obviously wanted to keep me. The reasons, I don't want to go into too much detail, but what I will say is the chairman and Micky Moore, the director of football, got a lot of stick for me going and I think that that stick probably could be aimed elsewhere because there's more reasons than that.

“They fought hard to keep me, did everything they could, but the fact that here at Gillingham, we'd met Brad and Shannon (Galinson) in the summer at the start of last season. When I got permission to speak to Gillingham again, the plans were outlined. (They were) very exciting and guaranteed plans. ‘This is what's happening, this is what you've got’. This is a two-year journey that we want you to be part of.”

League 1 Shrewsbury had offered Ainsworth and his assistant new contracts but the Gills triggered a termination clause to facilitate a move to ME7.

The Gills hope the new management team end their recent trend which has seen Neil Harris, Stephen Clemence and Mark Bonner all sacked and John Coleman lasting just 14 games before being replaced..

Ainsworth said: “I’m very flattered that they've identified me as that manager to do that two-year journey.

“The added bonus is I could move back home because I did miss my family a lot while I was up in the Shropshire area. It was a wrench, it was a real tough decision.

“This wasn't done lightly, but I'm really happy now. We made a decision, it's a good decision because we know where we're going. We have plenty of backing from the owners now to execute this plan, which I think this club has been crying out for.”

Ainsworth left a Shrewsbury team sitting bottom of League 1 for the chance to build something at the Gills.

He said: “I don't want anyone thinking it was easy to walk out of Shrewsbury Town. It wasn't easy.

“I have a hell of a respect for the chairman there and the people there and the fans.

“I probably took a little bit of stick for doing what I've done, but the reasons were that in place here is this two-year plan, guaranteed this is where it is.

“The job that the Galinsons and Joe (Comper, the managing director) have done to get us here has been fantastic, because they really pushed for us and I respect that, because it wasn't cheap and it wasn't easy.

“It was a huge, huge decision for us to make, to leave that football club because I did love it there and I was happy there but this is a new chapter now and I'm really getting stuck into this.

“You see in football how quickly it goes sometimes. The big thing was that plan in place when we had the meeting to show us it's there, ‘this is what you have’ and ‘this is the journey we want to go on’ that excites me a lot.”

Speaking about the appointment, co-owner Shannon Galinson said: “We continue to learn, of course. We realised over these last couple years there was one thing that we'd not been good at - continuity.

“We knew we needed to look at having a two-year solid plan, at least, and a management team that we would want to stay the course with and that would want to stay the course with us.

“We knew that we'd lacked that up until this point. Thinking about Gareth and Richard and inviting them along to our new journey of resetting and saying, ‘Okay, we are doing this thing and we are committed to a couple-year plan’, we couldn't think of anybody better.

“We were excited to get them here. Yes, a (financial) commitment but one that we actually sought out. We very much wanted these guys working with us in this building.”